The Light Between Oceans was a flawed movie that is likely to bore many, if not most, of its moviegoers. This was evidenced by the guy sitting behind me who was sawing logs for the entire second half. But I am a sucker for broken relationship movies caused by some strife, and that’s what I got here. The only thing I knew about this movie was that it was about a couple living on a small island while he managed a lighthouse and that they found a baby in a boat they took as their own after she suffered a series of miscarriages. I wish I had gone in knowing nothing about this movie.
All I needed to know was that it was a heavy drama, that it featured one of my favorite actors (Michael Fassbender – Shame, Steve Jobs), one of the following great actresses of our time who arrived on the scene with two massive performances in 2015 (Alicia Vikander – Ex Machina, The Other Danish Girl), and the director of one of my favorite movies of all-time (Derek Cianfrance – Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines). That enough would have gotten me in the theater. That is enough for me to give this a positive review despite a story that had much promise but had some uneven turns, ultimately leading to characters making decisions that didn’t make much sense. What I loved most about this movie (which will be the focus of this review) is how two different people can face the same ethical dilemma and how the decision can eat one person up so much that they almost can’t live with themselves. In contrast, the other person can continue living their life peacefully as if the decision they had to make was whether to have sausage or pepperoni on their pizza the night before.
I saw Me Before You back in 1991. It was called Dying Young, and Julia Roberts was the star. It stunk. I am entirely joking, but I promised myself I would use this as the first line of this review, regardless. The truth is I didn’t see Dying Young until 2005. That part is true, but the real truth is that these movies aren’t even in the same league. Dying Young wasn’t as poor as I thought, but I don’t remember much about it. On the other hand, Me Before You was an incredibly profound movie I will remember for years. It is also a movie that showcased Emilia Clarke’s range (HBO’s Game of Thrones) and firmly planted her as a leading actress for the next 10-15 years. The film also introduced Sam Claflin to the rest of the world, who had not seen 
With his scraggly beard, yellow teeth, foreboding scowl, and deliberate limp, Matthew McConaughey’s (Amistad, A Time to Kill) portrayal of Newt Knight, a poor white farmer who led an extraordinary rebellion during the Civil War, is a far cry from the same man who was pigeonholing his career a decade earlier by playing the same character over and over in hit or miss romantic comedies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, The Wedding Planner, Fool’s Gold, and The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past to name a few. McConaughey reinvented himself three or four years ago and re-established himself as a dramatic leading man with the likes of The Lincoln Lawyer, 
Mads Mikkelsen is most notably known as a villain. Whether you recognize him more as the man opposing James Bond in Casino Royale or as Hannibal Lecter on NBC’s hit show Lecter, he’s adept at playing the bad guy. But, in the most poignant performance of his career and one that earned him praise across the globe, Mikkelsen stars as Lucas, a kind and gentle daycare employee falsely accused of molesting one of his students in the Danish film and Academy Award-nominated foreign language film The Hunt.
Congratulations to all those associated with what will be the biggest surprise moneymaking movie of 2016. Jaume Collet-Serra’s (